Should, or can, an animal be accused of a crime?

I’d say, only once humans get good enough at animal communication to have verifiable conversations where they agree to these laws and fully understand our legal system. In other words, NO, not until we’re a lot more advanced in many other ways.

For example, we have the asinine principle that ignorance is no defence, while also making the law ridiculously enormous and written in such thick legalese that only someone with a very lengthy and expensive education has a hope of understanding it all, which I would say also invalidates its use on anyone but lawyers…

But the situation with animals is even more severe, since of course pretty much no animal is likely to have any kind of provable legal awareness for a long time.

I think they have in the past (Middle Ages, etc) but I don’t think it has happened lately.

A very young child is not held to the same standards as older children or adults. Animals seldom have a greater sense of right and wrong than toddlers do. Acts of destruction or violence by a human may be criminal, but the same acts by animals are not. While it may be necessary to destroy an animal when it becomes dangerous, it is not the same thing as punishing a criminal.

The species most closely related to us, chimpanzees, are by nature highly aggressive You can’t judge other animals by human standards or vice verse.

The two underlying premises of making an act a crimes is intent and capacity to understand right from wrong.

While the intent of an animal can be argued (“Yes your honor, we mountain lions bite to kill”) but capacity to know right from wrong is what differentiates human consciousness from animal consciousness.

And those two necessary factors also guide the judging of a child’s acts as whether it is a crime or not. And it is why a thirteen year old is generally not tried as an adult.

Not without granting them at least a selection of “human” rights, such as the right to a fair trial and the right to an attorney, which requires their official legal recognition of personhood.

Animals are accused of crimes/offenses and are punished for them all the time. If a dog poops on the carpet it knows it did something wrong and practically apologizes for it by slinking around in a submissive pose. A dog that steals a hamburger off the counter knows that was wrong and will do the same.
If a predatory animal kills a human it is often killed for the offense.

No, not legally but @LuckyGuy posits a great point.

My cat was scratching the carpet last night, he knows better and has a giant cat tree. All I had to do was yell his name and he got all wild eyed and ran. He has the capacity to understand, ditto for counter sitting and napping on the dining room table. haha

There are a few things to consider here.

First, we need to ask ourselves why we do not attribute crimes to animals now. Is it because we don’t believe they have the capacity to act with motive and intent? Is it because we don’t think they can differentiate between right and wrong? Or is it simply because we know the huge “cultural” influences will likely define “crime” differently from species to species?

@LuckyGuy brought up a good point. Many humans do accuse animals of crimes, and punish them accordingly. This is a bit of a hypocritical thing to do, when we look at the way we treat our pets. They have very little freedom to choose, most of them are caged/crated/leashed for a large amount of time. We rationalize this by telling ourselves we are keeping them safe. Yet, when we want to scold them, we imagine our pets to know all sorts of things. We think the puppy “knows” not to pee in the house. Why should it? Does this young animal have any idea what a “house” is? Does it get that we humans like our carpets clean and will have to mop up its mess? Does it understand why we, ourselves, go to the special white room when we need to pee? Considering its highly functional nose, do our attempts at cleaning even convince him that we have, actually, cleaned?

We can’t expect our pets to understand our human world, and we should be just as critical of our ability to understand theirs. The dog stealing food is not really stealing. He is a scavenger, evolved to find food and eat it. No dog would punish another dog upon finding his bone gone – what’s left out is fair game.

Here is some research on dogs with a “guilty” look. It’s interesting, and reinforces the idea of a dog’s strengths and weaknesses: They don’t magically know what humans consider a crime, but they do “magically” know what their humans will do next. They are skilled predictors of our actions, because they watch us and pay attention. Which is what makes us love them.

Well…they aren’t formally accused, but they certainly are punished if the crime is heinous enough.

Yes a dog that kills can be put to sleep. That’s capital punishment.

Destroying an animal whose behavior is objectionable such as eating eggs or livestock is not punishment, but a necessity to safeguard our animals. The purpose of punishment is to instill the fear of rejection or pain when the instinctive desire for a self-serving act is deemed unacceptable. This is why we reprimand our pets and impose fines and imprisonment upon people who break laws. However, consequences that have not been experienced are seldom a deterrent to undesirable behaviors. For this reason many today reject the idea of the death penalty for crimes committed by people, much less for the behavior of children and animals which have a limited cognitive ability.

You mean, like…..Cat Stevens…??